Were he to die today, no one would have any use for his wish list on amazon.de.

About the Categories

Miniature from the Liber Avium in Codex Sancrucensis 226

The posts in this blog are divided into three main categories: the dove, the falcon, and the opalescent parrot. The first two are to be taken allegorically and are inspired by an illumination from Codex Sancrucensis 226. One might think that dove and the falcon exhaustively divide all possible blog topics, but they don’t, and therefore there is also the opalescent parrot. This bird is described by Alfred Noyes:

ONCE upon a time, my little ones, there was a be-yewtiful parrot. He had long green wings, eyes like rubies,with grey wrinkles round them, and a crest that looked as if it had been dyed in the blood of Prester John. But, when he ruffled his feathers, he looked like an opalescent mist of emotions. So he was called the Opalescent Parrot. He was hatched by the Orinoco, where the Spanish bells go ping-pang-pong when it is time for the alligators to eat another explorer ; but there must have a conventional strain in his blood, for he actually cracked his shell at the very moment in 1837 when the Archbishop, Dr. Howley, entered Kensington Palace, and therefore it is only right that the misguided bird should be called a VICTORIAN parrot. (Alfred Noyes, The Opalescent Parrot)

What I find amazing: Here I was, maybe 1983-84??, a baby sitter, holding a small crying baby in Rome, wakeful–his brother Johannes and sister Maria already asleep,–the child grows up and writes beautiful prose. Perhaps I should not be surprised, considering his parentage.